The Bottle Trees
by Lena Carr
Summary: They can handle the dead things walking around. The dead things without bodies are a little harder. Goes AU after S3E1, "Seed." A sequel of sorts to "The Pellet with the Poison." Rated M for language and themes. Carol/Daryl.


**A/N:** At the end.

* * *

I.

Beth woke the whole of the block when she saw the ghost – first with screaming, and then rousing the last of the sluggards by emptying five rounds from her .38 into the wall of the commons area.

Daryl had been outside, coming back in from a pre-dawn piss and taking his own time about it in the colorless grey of a foggy morning in early spring. He came bursting into the block proper, Mutt and Jeff at his heels, to find everyone up in various stages of dressed and Beth frankly sobbing in her father's arms.

"It was there, it was there," she choked out, breathing like she'd nearly drowned and her face wet enough to match.

As Daryl lowered his crossbow, Tomas, Oscar and Carl were already disappearing down into the Tombs. Glenn's peeved query was over-ridden by the slamming door. The younger man shook his head and tried again. "Beth. What was it? What did you see?"

Beth just shook her head and clung, one-handed, to Hershel. Her revolver was still in the other fist - shaking, but pointed safely at the floor. Axel awkwardly patted Beth's back, staring fixedly at the door to the Tombs.

"Was it a walker?" Glenn asked. "Was there a walker in the block?"

"Not possible," Carol said, coming back to the common room with a squalling Judith on her hip. "The doors have been good for months." Her gaze shifted to meet Daryl's. "I checked the far end, and downstairs. The door's shut and there's no one but us."

Daryl nodded. "Upstairs?"

She shook her head.

"I'll get it." He turned back to Glenn. "Rick an' Maggie on watch?"

Glenn nodded. "I'll go check them. You'll wait for them to get back in?"

Daryl would, but suddenly staying in C-block made his skin crawl. He checked the cells upstairs, and down, and the far door again, then stepped outside, shoving the dogs out ahead of him. The mist was as thick and cold as it had been ten minutes before. Mutt and Jeff hung close for a moment, Jeff's part-colored face comically fierce, and then the dogs took off on a purposeful jog into the pale dampness.

Glenn came back from a fast trot around the close-up grounds to report no breaks and both the late watch guards awake. "They didn't even hear the shots," Glenn said. "Fog's doing weird things to noise."

Back inside, Carol had taken charge. Axel had been sent to dress completely and Hershel and Beth were sitting at the table as the girl wiped her eyes and the baby tried to tie Hershel's beard into knots. Carol, meanwhile, was stoking the stove and making impressive motions towards breakfast.

Tomas, Oscar and Carl came back as the oatmeal water was beginning to boil.

"Nothing," Tomas said. "No marks in the dust, ties still on the lower doors, no new walkers."

"I know what I saw," Beth insisted. "It was _there_."

"Not saying you didn't see anything, honey," Oscar said, safing his rifle and hanging the long knife on its peg by the door. "Just saying we didn't find anything. It was like…" He let the sentence trail off, as the rest of the group looked from one to the next, and then away again.

II.

"A ghost." Carol folded her arms and stared at the ceiling, as if answers were writ in the smoke stains that marked the leaks in the stove pipe. Breakfast had been eaten and the dishes cleared, Oscar was on watch, Maggie had gone to bed, and Glenn, Axel, and Carl had scattered to the day's chores.

The rest of the so-called 'council' – because no one person was actually _head-motherfucker-in-charge_, not since Rick had formally given up on it, late in the summer – shifted uncomfortably. Rick just shook his head and stared at his hands. Then he looked up, his eyes going from Carol to Tomas to Hershel, and then over to Daryl, where he stood against the door to the yard.

Daryl shrugged. "I dunno, man. She was sure there was somethin' there. She's a kid, but she don't panic."

"Nothing down in the Tombs?" Rick asked Tomas.

"Nothin'. But," the Mexican hesitated.

"If you saw something, share it with the rest of us," Hershel said. "We need to know as much as we can."

Tomas blew out a breath. "My boys – they've seen things. Down over in D, and a couple times in the storage area down in the Tombs. 'Round the boiler room." His eyes flicked toward Rick, then away again. Daryl knew, and everyone knew, that Rick didn't blame any of them for what that mad-dog idiot Andrew had done, but none of them liked to mention anything connected with Lori around Rick. Safer that way.

And Tomas had always been a canny bastard.

He went on. "That was a lot of why we wanted to move over here, into C-block. Yeah, it's warmer, and safer all together, but a lot of it was this…feeling. Like something there that wasn't."

"Axel is a rather nervy person," Hershel said, "And Oscar is somewhat superstitious as well."

Tomas shrugged. "Whatever. You can argue with them if you want, now that your girl saw it, too."

Hershel's mouth pursed behind his beard, but he said nothing.

"Any suggestions?" Carol said. "A ghost doesn't seem like something we can actually do something about." When the silence dragged on, she sighed and pushed herself off the stove. "Well, when someone has any suggestions on steps to take, maybe we can discuss it again. Meanwhile, if the fog's burned off, I have diapers to put on the line."

The men looked at each other and shrugged. "I'll help haul the tubs," Rick said. When Carol would have protested, Rick raised a hand. "One trip, and then I'll call it quits. You can get Carl to help with the rest."

Tomas's eyes slid over to Daryl, considering. Daryl stared back. Going on eight months, and he knew that look.

Tomas said, "Hey, country, want help with the fenceline?"

_Yeap_. Daryl sighed. "Sure."

They were halfway along the fence – done with the thick buildup by the old pigpens, and so over two thirds done – before Tomas got around to talking about what was on his mind.

"You think that girl saw a ghost?"

"Dunno," Daryl said, popping the next walker through its eye socket. "Wasn't there. Wasn't her." Red splattered out, dotting the faded shirt its neighbor wore. One of the fresher ones, then. Tomas got the next, more decrepit one, sending a black spray arching through the air.

Tomas jerked the crowbar loose with a grunt. "But it could'a been."

"Could'a. Might'a jus' been mist an' a sleepy girl." He lowered his rebar, looked at Tomas. "You were in the room before me. What do you think?" When Tomas hesitated, he thumped the rebar on the gravel. "Come on, spill it."

"Didn't see what she saw either."

"But you guys have seen something. Or is it another rotten batch of that shit that Axel brewed up?"

"Ran out two months ago, you know that." When Daryl just stared, Tomas sighed. He busted another fresh walker, wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand. Daryl shook out his pocket rag and handed the red cloth over. Tomas took it with a nod.

"I dunno what the girl saw. But I know what I saw, and I think it's _la llorona_."

Daryl folded his hands on top of the rebar, rested his chin on the back of his glove. "The crying woman. The momma lookin' for her kids."

"Yeah. That one."

"You're sure – never mind." Tomas had his fuck-around moods. This was not one of them.

Daryl rubbed the back of his hand against his face, thought about Judith, who slept by herself now, in a separate cell they'd hung with bright red sheets and a yellow-flowered blanket. A month before, he'd over-heard Glenn and Maggie talking about finding another crib, about the possibility of another baby in that room.

"Well, fuck." He picked up the rebar again, strode down the dog run to the next walker. Watching the thing slowly collapse, he said, "What the fuck do we do about that?"

Tomas snorted. "Ahead a'you already, man. Me 'an m'boys, we got a plan."

III.

It was simpler, stupider, and made more sense than anything Daryl would have come up with, that was for sure.

Simple enough, even, and short enough on actual distilled stupidity, that Daryl didn't even bother running it through the rest of the council.

Which backfired on him, in a way, when Carol came wandering around the east side of the prison two days later and found Daryl and the former inmates taking turns sinking a narrow hole with a pickax and a shovel.

"Heading for China?" she asked, and Daryl startled just as he was bringing the pickax down. Oscar jerked back and the pick missed him, clean, but Oscar stumbled back and fell across the deadfall they'd drug up the road the day before. Mutt and Jeff leapt out of the way with comical dispatch, and then jumped back in to nose at Oscar in concern.

"Jesus, man, watch it!"Oscar cursed, and "Gedoffame, you mangy mutts!" He waved his arms at the dogs, who ignored his protests and went on worriedly licking at his face until Axel called them off.

Daryl muttered, "Sorry," under his breath, and set the pickax down so he could give Oscar an arm up. "My bad."

Carol just stared at them, at the broken-armed deadfall, and then back at them. Daryl felt himself wilt a bit under her gaze. He opened his mouth to explain, but Axel jumped in first.

"It's gonna be a bottle-tree, Ms – owww! Tomas, you got no call to be kicking me! I was just -."

But Carol had already made the connection. Her hand went to the notch in her collarbone, where a tiny gold cross had hung, half a lifetime ago.

"A bottle tree? For…" This time, out in the bright sunshine, her voice was incredulous, and her mouth was almost smiling.

"For the haunts," Oscar said. "We been here long enough, past time we got a tree up anyway."

"This'in's the last one," Daryl said. "Got a metal pole over on the north side, and an elderberry grew up in that goldenrod patch over to the west, and-"

"That one you put up by the clothesline yesterday." Carol nodded. "I see." She looked them over again, at the mud ground into their knees and the sweat dripping from their faces, despite the crisp wind. Sighing, she shifted her carry bag to her front and pulled a glass bottle out with one hand, and a set of plastic cups with the other.

All of their eyes closed on the Fanta. "I thought we was all out of that!" Axel burst out.

"We had one left, which isn't enough to share. But I thought it might go four ways…"

It didn't go very far, four ways, and even less five, because none of them would let her empty the bottle into his cup. But there was enough for two decent swallows apiece for the men. They stood there around the hole and the dead tree and drank the orange coke slowly.

Carol tipped her head back and drained the last drops from the bottle, freckles moving as she swallowed. Daryl was still staring when she brought the bottle down and she smiled at him. "Here," she said, handing over the bottle. "To get you started." She collected the cups and tucked them away in her canvas bag. "Dinner in a little while. I'll see you men when you're done."

They all stood and watched her walk away.

"Are you actually going to do anything there, man?" Axel asked. "It ain't fair, calling dibs if you're not actually gonna, you know, spark at her."

"Shut the fuck up," Daryl said, in nearly the same breath as Tomas. He sighed. "C'mon, lets get this tamped in. It's noon already."

IV.

Axel's dumb-ass remarks had nothing to do with him asking Carol to back him up on the next run. _Nothing_.

Fuck, it'd just been midwinter that he'd told Tomas to have Axel back off. Any woman who worked as hard and steady as Carol didn't need pestering from any scrawny light-fingered conman too stupid to hold up a store with a real gun. Nor him pawing at her, or making stupid puppy eyes at her.

He would have brought a third body along, just in case, because the thought of Carol alone if something stupid happened to him made his gut clench, but Rick had been up three and eight times a night, since the thing with Beth and the…thing, and so had Hershel, and it was an easy run. A small, short one.

He wouldn't have taken Carol, otherwise.

The house sat back off the highway, on the outskirts of a new development. They'd learned, the hard way that first winter, how to pick places that were likely to still have supplies.

New developments and McMansions were hit and miss. Trailer parks reliably came up dry. Older developments, particularly ones with children's toys out front – those were most likely to have something.

But he wouldn't take Carol someplace where he thought there would be kids.

This one seemed a better mark – older farmstyle house with fresh paint, decorated in a style he'd come to associate with old folks. Grandparents with a well-stocked pantry, and – one could hope – family that had cared to come fetch them when the shit hit the fan.

This one turned out to be good except for the last part. The grandma was up and staggering, moving slow like walkers did when they hadn't eaten anything in a long time. Taking her down was easy – Carol stood on the front porch and beat on the door with a stick. Daryl went round the back and took a crowbar to the back door while grannie was busy up front. She didn't even make it to the back door by the time he'd pried it open, but folded neatly in the hallway when he put a bolt through her forehead.

After he let Carol in the front, they swept the first floor. The grannie had been bit, by the look of the bandage on one arm. When their first sweep through the house came up empty, he frowned. "Up stairs?" he mouthed, pointing at the staircase.

"Look," Carol shook her head, pointing at a wheelchair tucked behind the front door. "No lift on the stairs." So they went through the downstairs again.

This time, they found the granddad wedged between the wall and the bed, his wizened legs tangled in the bedclothes, and his head bashed in with a table lamp. Daryl shoved the bed back over the top of him.

"Grannie musta done it, when he turned, but not 'fore he got her."

Carol nodded. "Poor dears."

Daryl shrugged, "Least ways he didn't know. That he'd killed her, I mean." If he ever got bit, Daryl didn't intend to make anyone else put him down. If he had any strength left in him, he'd put a bolt up his own nose. Not risking that they'd fuck it up, leave him to tear through the rest of the group. It would be the worst sort of failure.

"And she went, knowing he was at rest. There are worse ways." Carol sounded kinda sad, kinda satisfied. At her words, he looked up. But her face was clear and calm. No sign of any tension or sense of loss.

"Yeah. Let's get that pantry."

A huge limb of the backyard oak had fallen against the side of the house. Even the bare limbs cast gloom over the kitchen, obscuring the light. Carol slung her rifle and fished in her bag for a flashlight. She played the beam over the shelves.

Rats had been there before them, tearing at the bags and chewing labels off the cans. In the amber light of Carol's flashlight, all the flour looked like cornmeal.

"Oh, god," she said, reverently, "Peaches. And here, pears."

And beans. And more beans. And a case of Alpo cans. And more beans. And two 12 packs of rootbeer in bottles.

They shifted the lot of it out on the front steps, and then raided the kitchen drawers for matches, cups, and knives. The closets yielded blankets and sheets aplenty.

"A good find, Daryl," Carol said. He stepped back to hold the screen door open as she passed.

"Must be having you along," he said. "Good luck."

They loaded the little Jap car to the gills. Carol helped him slide the last box of cans in before she reached past him to pull out a can of peaches.

"Finder's fee?" she asked, her eyes dancing.

They ate the peaches with their fingers from the can, taking turns to avoid nicking their skin on the rough edges. When the last of the slices had slid down their throats, they drank the syrup in tiny sips, passing the can from hand to hand. It was just past noon, the sun full on their faces and the air clean and sweet after the musty house.

"Here," she said, "You did the heavy lifting, you take the rest. No, I'm full."

He raised the can, let the last of the syrup run into his mouth. Carol licked at her fingers, tidy as a cat.

The edge of the can caught his lip and he hissed at the sting.

"Goose," Carol said, "Let me see." Obediently, he let her take his head in her hands, bend his face out of shadow. He shut his eyes against the glare. One thumb swiped over the corner of his mouth. "Just a nick."

Then he felt her shift closer, and her breath on his mouth, before her lips touched lightly against his, and the tip of her tongue smoothed over the cut.

Then just as fast, she had let go of him and stood.

He opened his eyes, squinted at her shadow against the sun.

"We better go," she said, so quietly he could barely hear her, and turned for the car.

They put down one walker at the gate, latched it behind them for good luck, and kicked up gravel on the way to the hard top.

It was a long hour back, him glaring fixedly at the road ahead and her staring out the passenger window.

V.

Oscar didn't like the rootbeer bottles. Stood right in the yard, with the bare limbs of the cedar behind him, and turned his nose up at them.

Daryl focused his eyes on the dun slope of the hill and the green flags sprouting down at the slough, trying to keep his temper. He'd gotten up three times the night before – twice to check the baby and once to stand outside Carol's door and wonder what she would say if he had slipped inside.

And now Carol was at the far side of the yard, cutting Rick's hair in the sunshine.

She'd offer it to him, yesterday, before they'd even gotten the rest of the peaches out of the car. Daryl had not a clue what to say to that, so he'd grunted and shaken his head, no.

But Rick had over heard, and Maggie, so Glenn had to have his hair trimmed, and Carl wouldn't let anyone touch his unless his old man got his cut, too. So now Rick was sitting on the bench, holding a drawing of the spring planting up and getting scolded by Carol for talking to Hershel about beans while she had scissors in her hand.

None of which was Oscar's fault. So Daryl didn't throw the case at the other man. "What the fuck is wrong with them? You said you wanted bottles, I brought you bottles."

"They're no good. You need Heineken beer, man."

Daryl sat the box of bottles down with a rattle, pulled one out, and rapped the lid off against the bench. It tasted stale and nasty as hell.

"Why," he asked, when he had choked down that mouthful, "do they have to be Heineken? You got a thirst on for fake German horse piss?" Tomas and Axel made their way up from the dog run and walker-popping duties. Daryl turned to them. "Or is it one of you who's too damn good to drink American beer?"

"Hey, easy, bro, it ain't like that…"

Tomas threw his crowbar at the fence, scowled when it bounced straight off instead of catching. "What, country, you like them fag beers?"

Oscar snorted. Daryl felt his expression turn murderous.

Axel, of all people, bravely stepped into the breach. "It's not like that. It's the bottles, not the brew. Brown's no good. Needs to be colors to work right."

Daryl stared at him. "You're shitting me. Colored glass."

"Or clear," Oscar put in. "Like, you know, Corona."

"Or Miller High Life." Axel hastened to add. "Sorry. We shoulda said."

"Alright." Daryl nodded. He folded his arms, still in a filthy mood. "I seen brown bottle trees b'fore."

"Yeah, but they don't work. You need colored bottles," Axel said. "At least a couple."

"Or clear," Oscar said again. "But color's better. Brown bottles don't hold shit. Haunts run right the fuck back out again."

Daryl opened his mouth to say something about what kind of haunts came out of brown bottles and then thought better of it.

"Fine. I'll get you some green bottles."

"Or other colors, too. Blue's really good," Axel said, still trying to calm the air. "Like, you know, those candle – OW!"

Tomas set his foot back on the ground. "He knows what color blue is, dipshit. Now go help the kid chase that damn pig back in the pen before it eats all the collards we have left."

Axel stomped off down the path to the barnyard, muttering about how sick he was of cabbage type food and of being treated like a punching bag. Daryl stared up at the sky and did not think about the blue bottles in Carol's cell, the ones she used as candle holders.

VI.

That evening, long after dark but before second watch, when everyone generally stirred and woke and lay awake for a bit, Hershel got up to answer an old man's bladder.

The way the old man told it, he made his way down the aisle with his uneven stride, passed through the common room and outside to the yard and the jacks. Coming back in, he had nodded at Tomas, bundled in a pale sheet and his dark hair hanging in his face, as the Mexican sat at the common room table.

They'd all done that – grown weary of lying awake in bed, unwilling to stir the air with their pacing and so pull some else from sleep. So they ended up in the common room. Sometimes, Carol would bring a novel, Hershel his Bible. Daryl would light the oil lamp and fletch arrows. Other times, they'd just sit in the darkness, appreciating the novelty of staring at the shadows from an upright perspective. Sooner or later, it would be morning, or the change of watch at the small hours, and a person would either have company, or an excuse to go back and lie in bed, staring at nothing. It happened.

Still half asleep, Hershel had thought that Tomas nodded back.

Hershel had made it as far as the inner door before the figure at the table stood up and ran past him, through the closed bars.

"But you said it was Tomas," Carl said, rubbing at his face. "How did Tomas run through the bars?"

"It fucking was not '_Tomas_'," the man in question said. "On account of how I was the fuck out on guard shift like I was fucking supposed to be."

"Language, please," Carol held a damp cloth to the bump on Hershel's head. Daryl, hesitating in the door and caught between helping to search C Block again and heading back out to guard duty, noted that it had been Hershel who had flinched, not Carol. Anyway, shouting about it didn't seem to be helping. And there was no one on the tower.

"I'm going back out." He nodded at Carol as he left, she mouthed at him, _be safe_.

Up in the tower, he propped the door open and slowly paced around the perch a few times, before he stopped and slid down the wall, ending up cross legged on the walkway. Down below, the fence was silver, the grass smooth, and the handful of bottles in the north 'tree' gleamed.

They'd hung up the brown bottles anyway, on the theory that it might help.

Daryl dug in his pockets, all of them, hunting a cigarette and his lighter, but came up with neither. He sunk back against the wall, tugged his jacket closer.

Oscar and Axel had been insistent that malevolent haunts would end up caught in the bottles, "An' most of the ordinary, low-life cockroach kind, too." They'd chewed over having a blessing, maybe attempting an exorcism, but Hershel had outright refused to participate, calling it a _perversion of the holy office of prayer_. Tomas had agreed with the principle of god-talk, but when Hershel backed out, he did, too. "Not messing with _padre_ stuff. That's not me." He'd looked at Daryl. "That Korean kid, he know any magic Asian stuff?"

Which was exactly the sort of thing Daryl wouldn't have had a clue about, a year and half ago, but it had come up over that first winter, when they were all sharing blankets in a freezing metal shipping container. "Nah. His folks were Methodist. Converted from whatever pagan stuff long before they hit America."

"We could try slipping a lens from one of the pups," Oscar said. "See which ones are floating around."

"Would that even do any good? This place has to be lousy with haunts," Axel objected. "And I'm not getting bit, holding that critter so you can try."

Daryl had no idea what Oscar was talking about, and the garbled explanation about 'borrowing' the dog's ability to see the unseen made even less sense. Either way, neither Mutt nor Jeff would let any of them touch either dog for the next two days, by which time Oscar had given up.

It was fucking _unfair_, was what it was. First the dead things got up and started walking around, which at least they knew how to deal with. Now they were floating around, and that was just _not right_.

It didn't bear thinking on, either, just what kinda murdering scum – like that little rabid fuck Andrew – were haunting the place. Maybe some of the prisoners or the staffers had been decent people, but people didn't end up in a place like this for being angels. And from what Merle had told of his brother's stint in the big house, the guards weren't likely to be much better.

It made for unquiet consideration, at any rate, and meditating on the general injustice of it kept him wide awake until Glenn came to relieve him after midnight.

The next morning, he kicked at Axel's door. "Get up. We're going back to that drug store."

Axel clutched a blanket to his pasty chest and held up a hand against the sunlight. "What?"

"The storeroom where we got your damn mangy mutts. We're going back."

"C'mon, man, someone else has to have gone through that, after we broke the door."

"Maybe, but I saw you hiding the rest of those wine bottles. We're gonna see if you're as smart as you think. Git dressed."

Axel crawled into yesterday's clothes, grousing all the while about people spying on him.

Carol came out of the guard shack and peered down at them as they drove up to the gate. "Everything all right?" she called down.

"No, ma'am," Axel called back. "Glenn burned breakfast, we're just heading out to get pancakes."

Caught between laughing, punching Axel in the teeth, and hiding under the car, Daryl compromised on bailing out to get the gate and waving at Carol as he pulled it shut. "Just getting some stuff. Back before sunset."

Axel kept his trap uncharacteristically shut all the way there, and only took the wrong turn once. "You want to ring the bell?" he asked when they pulled into the parking lot. "You know, honk and circle?"

Daryl shook his head. "No. Just a fast grab. Not even going to let them know we're here."

"You're the boss, kemosabi. Leave it running?"

"Not that fast. Move it, show me where you hid the stuff."

Axel was right – someone else had been inside. And not just the dog they'd flushed out last trip – the pharmacy area had been riffled through again and the household wares section stripped of anything resembling a knife. But Daryl's faith (if it could be called that) in Axel was upheld – he dove into a pile of moldering newspapers and unearthed three half-cases of white-labeled wine bottles.

"You sure that's going to work?" Daryl held one of the bottles up to the light. The glass looked more pale brown than light green to him.

"It's what we got, bro. That's all that I found last time."

Daryl ran the flashlight around one more time, noted that the momma dog hadn't been back, and went to hold the door for Axel. "Good job," he said.

The praise made Axel so giddy that he took two wrong turns in a row trying to get out of the dinky little town. "Sorry, man, sorry!" he pleaded, hunched over the wheel. Daryl snarled and hung his head out the window, trying to figure out where they were. He'd never been on this back street, and if the idiot got them boxed into a dead end, Daryl was going to chew Axel's throat out even before turning.

"Shut up," he snarled. "Left here. No, you fucking moron, left!"

"Sorry!" Axel jammed the tire up against the curb, had to back up, and rather than engage in a fifteen point turn, pulled the car through the next parking lot and in front of the little four store strip mall, bouncing over potholes and speed humps all the way. Then he had the gall to stop - before pulling out on the road - to look both ways.

Daryl sunk down in the seat and seethed. "Clear," he said, when the car didn't move. "Fuck it, I said go."

"Bro, look."

"I looked, there's no damn traffic! Go!"

"No, the store, man!"

Daryl looked.

They were parked in front of _Betty Boo's Bottles and Collectibles. _The glass front windows were lined with shelf upon shelf of glassware in every color of the rainbow.

Only one of the shelves collapsed as they wrenched the door open. Daryl stood for a moment, staring at the shards scattered over the floor, overlain with colored light from the glassware still in the windows. Most of it was cobalt – the dark blue of the wine bottle in the car, the old medicine bottles that Carol used for candle holders.

A round circle drew his eye – a lighter, softer blue, closer to the clear sky after a rain. He crouched over the glass, his boots grinding the bits into sand underfoot, and picked up the piece. It had broken in a near perfect circle the size of his palm.

"That's about the color of her eyes, ain't it?"

Daryl looked up to see Axel standing by the door, his arms full of dark blue bottles.

"Come on man, we ain't got all day."

He stood, tucking the glass into his shirt under the vest. "Keep your damn pants on."

He called a halt on the fourth trip, when a walker shambled around the corner. By then they had bottles stacked two deep in the back seat foot wells. Axel did his best to jam the shop door shut again, to the point where the last shelf shuddered and fell with a muffled crash.

Daryl restrained his impulse to sympathize with the grief in the other man's face and instead patiently directed Axel back to the main road.

By the time they hit the highway, the musical clatter of bottle against bottle had Axel grinning like an idiot again, so Daryl yelled at him every time he let the car drift over the rumble strips.

Besides, the little gambler was right. It did match her eyes.

VII.

The next two days, fog clung late. In the day, clouds hung over the prison, threatening a long drink for the new-planted beans but never delivering. Pressure sat deep on the people in the prison as well – a pot of stew burned, Carol had to hang wet clothes all through the block, and everyone was tired and snappish.

Oscar and Axel and Tomas got into another argument about the bottle trees – about whether it would still collect haunts if the bottle mouths were jammed all the way down on a branch, or if the mouth had to be a little open, so things could crawl in.

"It's the glass, man, it don't matter if it's open or not," Axel said.

Oscar folded his arms. "Look, I know you ain't never had never had no problem with your little pencil dick -"

"Why you gotta be that way, man? Why?"

Oscar ignored him and went on. "But nothing works right when things are all jammed up and don't move. You got to have some space, or nothing goes in." He made a move with his hips. "You know, like with motion in the ocean."

They'd been shouting at each other in the common room, and at that point Beth blushed scarlet and Maggie threw them all outside.

They ended up compromising on putting three quarters of the bottles on every branch they could, regardless of size, and scrounging up string so Oscar could make bindings so the rest could get hung hanging free. That peace lasted until Tomas tried to take Carol's clothesline for bottle ties.

The bad feelings after that lingered well after dinner.

The dogs, too, felt the tension, and kept trying to dodge inside in order to hide under the table and pretend that it was something else whining. Daryl – well, it wasn't hiding, because he was right where everyone could see him – but he stayed in the upstairs perch until he couldn't take the smell of wet clothes any more.

He wandered downstairs to find Oscar sitting in the common room, a near empty spool of what Merle had called _five-fifty cord_ on the table and two tubs of bottles on the floor. Daryl leaned a hip against the cold stove to watch Oscar's fingers patiently tie knots in the cord, fastening a wide net around the clear bottle. The bindings inched up the bottle, neck to base, and then finished with a palm-wide handle.

Oscar set the finished bottle down, picked up another, this one dark blue.

"Why colors?" Daryl asked, when that one was half finished. "If it's glass that catches the haunts, why's it matter if they're brown?" There had already been an extended shouting match with Maggie about using plastic bottles. To be fair, Maggie was even more hard core than Hershel about the whole thing being _heathen voodoo bullshit_, so there was no reason that plastic should be even more useless than glass. On the other side, even Daryl understood that plastic wouldn't work.

Oscar didn't look up from his knotting. "Beauty. That's what my grandma said. My old lady's grannie, she said the same thing. Needs to be a pretty thing, with colors. Brown don't fly, not black neither."

"Huh." Daryl frowned. "Some black stuff's pretty, too," he said, thinking of turkey vultures rocking on the wind, and Merle's bike, the way it had gleamed after the last paint job, three years before the end of the world. He realized that Oscar's hands had fallen still on the bottle in his lap. Daryl jerked his gaze up to see Oscar staring at him.

Then Daryl realized what he had said, and leaned back. "Oh, no man, no. Not what I meant –" But Oscar was already ahead of him, laughing like a loon and slapping his knee with a free hand.

Daryl dropped his face into one hand. Oscar only laughed louder. "Oh right, yeah, I never woulda thought of you, you sniffing around that grey gal like that!"

"Shut the fuck up, man, not what I meant."

The yard door opened on the last of that, and Axel stuck his head in. "Wha'd you mean?"

Oscar swallowed down his laughter, but the shit-eating grin stayed on his face. "Meant nothing, man. Hey, A, how bout you go get more of that green cord from the store room? I'm bout done with what we got here."

Axel, pleased as always to be of use, nodded and left.

When the door shut, Daryl said again, "That wasn't what I meant."

Oscar grinned at him, the fucking shit, but he only said, "Your secret's safe with me, man. I won't tell nobody. Besides," he said, tugging at the next knot, "I'm talking about what my grannie and Susie's grannie say. Said. And they said that haunts want things that remind them a' day and the world and life. Flowers and grass and sky. Sun and stars." He tied off the handle and set the finished bottle in the tub. "That's why they cling to places they know, an' that's why they'll crawl right up in a colored bottle, or one that's clear like stars, and go right to sleep, until there's nothing left of them."

He picked up the next bottle, measured out an arm's length of string. "Hope that Axel hurries up. It's gonna take me all day to finish these."

Then Beth came in, and the dogs snuck in, and Daryl helped chase them out again before they could knock over the bottles.

No one had seen the…whatever since Hershel had hit his head.

The third day dawned bright and clear. Rick gave up waiting on rain and cranked the generator long enough to pour water all over the beans (and the radishes, and the carrots) and to draw a herd of walkers to the fence by the time he shut the engine down. They spent the rest of the morning on fence cleanup – putting down walkers until they lay against the fence like drift wood on one side of the prison, then shifting over to the other side to draw the walkers off while a pickup crew snuck up and dragged off the dead walkers for burning.

They finished by noon, and even had time to wash before dinner. Carol left them to clean up the dishes on their own and went to take watch. Daryl walked with her, hands stuffed in his pockets. Carl was waiting on his relief with scant patience, and came down the stairs in a rush, calling back, "Just one walker, over east!" as he headed for the pigpen.

Somehow, Daryl followed Carol all the way up to the top of the watch tower before he realized it. He stopped with his feet on the last step. Still down in the hole. Carol turned and looked at him.

"So. Ah. Later," he said.

Carol tugged her rifle strap higher on her shoulder and let her hand rest on his, where it gripped the rim of the trapdoor's lid. "See you tonight," she said, and bent close, brushing her lips over his.

He blinked. She drew back, her eyes searching his face. Whatever she saw, it made her smile and bend close again. This time, the kiss lasted longer, and his head nodded after her when she stepped back.

"Later," she said, and let the trapdoor close.

His feet took him back to the yard before he focused on his surroundings.

He stood in the wide concrete plain, under the wide sky, looking at the green grassy slope, the bright blue sky, and the rainbow of glass hung on the bottle tree at the end of the clothesline. The end of the day stood a long way off, like a deer watching from the woodline.

Then Oscar came out with the second tub of string bound bottles, and hollered for Daryl to help him tote it around to the other side of the prison.

He found other things to occupy the rest of the hours of daylight, but could have listed none of them, if anyone had asked.

At sunset, he sat on the transblock walkway, watching the sunset fade and indigo take the sky. Saw Rick come out and make his way to the guard tower, watched Carol emerge and retrace Rick's path to the yard. When she stopped, at the door to C-Block, she looked up and met his eyes before continuing inside.

Daryl stayed motionless, arms locked around his knees.

When the door to the walk scraped open, he came to his feet, the rusted wire biting at his fingers as he clung to it. Carol shut the door and came to where he stood, her arms folded tight to her body against the fresh wind.

The cool air stirred his hair, tugged at her shirt ends. He stepped closer. She tilted her head up to him, unfolded one arm and wrapt her hand around his fingers.

The rising wind drew a single, whistling wail from the bottle tree. Carol cocked her head at him, her eyes never leaving his. When he would have flinched away, she tightened her grip on his hand and tugged him closer. She lifted the other hand and touched his face, traced his mouth with a shaking thumb.

That was like a punch to the gut – she was as terrified as he was. He wasn't by himself. _Not in this alone_.

He released the mesh, folded his hand over hers, holding it against his cheek. Turned his head and pressed a kiss to her palm. Then she stepped against him, tangled her fingers in his hair, and drew his mouth to hers.

VIII.

She led him up the stairs, through the expectant silence of early evening in the cells. He felt like everything was written on his face, screamed in his walk, but there was only Maggie in the common room, reading a book as she kept the leftover stew company.

Carl looked up from his bunk as they passed, a single flicker of his eyes, and then dropped his gaze again to the same comic he'd been carrying around for months. Another light shone at the end – Hershel's cell, where the old man probably sat up with his Bible.

It was only Daryl, and Carol, walking close enough to touch, as they had been, for longer than he could remember.

She paused in the door of her cell for a single beat, looking over her shoulder at him. Then she stepped inside, and he followed. He slipped off the crossbow and leaned it against the wall before taking her in his arms again.

"Wait", she whispered, and slipped out of his hands to go to the cell door and the haphazard blanket draped over the bars. He stood and watched her struggle with it for before jolting into action and helping her tuck the corners in securely. The lock settled in with a distinct click.

Then she came to him again, brushed her lips against him, her hand flat on his chest. Before he could do more than touch her, Carol stepped back and knelt. The scratch of a lighter preceded the flicker of flames on her candles.

"Here," she said, "help me," and lifted a hand to pull him down to her, her fingers cupping his face and her mouth opening against his.

He had bedded women before – drunken tomfoolery a lifetime ago, when he was a boy, cold commercial transactions with the girls who worked the bars north of town, a few of Merle's customers, desperate enough to trade anything for another hit.

He'd never had anything like this – her practical commonsense in tugging the mattress off the bed, the slow careful shedding of their clothes, careful of buttons and clasps that would be a bitch to repair or replace. Never had a woman turn a smile on him, and let it break into a soundless laugh, so that they stopped halfway through to simply hold each other and smother their chuckles against each other. Never held a woman and seen the dark fear in the depths of her eyes, and the way that he could banish that fear, with a hesitant touch, a slow press of his lips to her temple.

He had not known he needed to see her, until they were both bare to the candle light and she arced over him. Her skin was marble under the light, violet in shadows. He ran his hands over her torso, up the cage of her ribs, cupped the slight mass of her breasts in his palms. His fingers were dark against her pale chest, and she gasped as he shifted under her, raised himself up to taste the sweat gleaming on her skin.

She wanted him. She had always been able to heal him, to calm his panicked terrors and wipe away the meaning from his scars. He had not known that he could do the same for her.

After, she pulled a blanket from the floor and let him hold her close, let her weight anchor him to the mattress and the floor and the prison and the world.

_This is why there are haunts_, he knew, feeling his thoughts grow sleepy and distant. _Because there is something holding them to the world, as tight as they are holding on._

IX.

He woke seamlessly from sleep – one moment Daryl had been sitting on the end of the dock, barefoot and his shirt falling in pieces from his shoulders, while beside him Merle sat humming, watching as their bobbers slowly drifted in a lake of stars. Far out in the lake, out past Orion, their father had groaned and snapped his teeth as he lurched back and forth in the john-boat.

Then he was awake, blinking at the moonlight and the shadow that passed before the door to his cell.

_No. Carol's cell_. With the blanket loose from the door and the candles long out. Faintly, he could hear the baby beginning to fuss again.

He was alone.

He was in the doorway, knife in one hand and crossbow in the other, before the prickling of gooseflesh reminded him he was still bare-assed as the day he'd been born. He stepped out onto the walkway and scanned the block, up and down. Judy was making more noise now, the huffing complaints that foretold an on-coming wail, like heat lightning spoke of a storm on the horizon.

Down stairs, in the center of the block, a figure turned, moonlight washing her hair to silver, the perspective making it appear that her white shirt reached to the floor. She raised a hand to him, a casual wave of its _okay, just a minute_, before disappearing beneath him into the cell below. Judith let out another sob, then quieted into gurgling chatter.

Daryl let his breath out, but the feeling of unease clung to his skin. He went back for his pants and boots, dressing quickly and jerking the laces tight without bothering to wind them around the hooks.

He snatched his crossbow back up and made his way down the stairs, moving as fast as he could, as silent as he could. No need to wake anyone still sleeping. The baby was quieter, now, chattering something that sounded like _mamamamama_. The sheet over the nursery cell swayed in and out as Carol rocked the baby back and forth.

_Just a cranky baby, _Daryl thought._ Mama, she's gonna love that. Judith called her that before Beth. And, where the _hell_ is that girl?_ Before he remembered Rick and Beth were both on watch, and Carl slept like a log in the first half of the night.

He hit the bottom of the stairs and turned to double back to the nursery cell. Maybe Carol would need some of the baby food or something.

Then the common room door opened and Carol's voice called softly, "Daryl?"

His head snapped around. There was Carol, wrapt in her dark coat, shutting the door to the common room behind her. _Then who?_

His fist closed around the cold metal of the nursery door and heaved. The crash of the door slamming open reverberated through the block, waking everyone, and startling Judith into full fledged sobbing. "Ma-ma!" she shrieked, falling back into the crib from where she had been standing, holding onto the side. "Ma-ma!"

Otherwise the nursery was empty. Daryl sagged against the bars, staring, barely aware as Carol pushed past him to gather up Judith.

"Oh, baby, it's okay, it's okay…"

The baby was having none of it, reaching out past Carol for the doorway. Carol turned towards Daryl, her mouth opening to say something. Then she gasped and stepped back, clutching Judith. Daryl spun, belatedly bringing up his bow.

There was nothing there.

There went on being nothing there, even as Carl came staggering out of his cell, and Maggie and Glenn from theirs, and Hershel hobbled down the aisle, and the guys upstairs came clattering down the stairs.

"Ma-ma! Ma-ma!" Judith fussed, twisting in Carol's arms.

Daryl met Carol's eyes over the head of the baby. "Shhhh, shhhh," Carol said. "Shhh. It's okay, your mama had to leave, but she'll be back. Don't you worry." She patted Judith on the back. "Shhhhh. It's okay."

_Something holding them here_, Daryl thought. In Carol's arms, the baby fretted again. "Ma-ma…"

Heedless of his naked back, Daryl pushed through the crowd for the door to the yard.

When he stepped outside, the concrete yard was empty, just as he knew it would be. Out beyond the clothesline, the bottle tree raised spindly arms to the sky, the bottles clubbed fists against the night, the hanging vessels turning slowly underneath. A trace of wind touched Daryl's cheek, and a low moan breathed across the yard.

* * *

_end_

* * *

**A/N:** Written for the Nine Lives "Good Luck" Challenge. The prompt I picked was 'Rainbow.' (If you check each section, each is associated with a color, white-red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet-black.) Set in the same slightly AU universe as "The Pellet with the Poison" and "Three Rains Past."

Warnings: Dixon language, adult themes, child endangerment, clashing religious values and crude language involving sexual habits, pet animals, and microbrew beer. Low, low smut.

I have the best beta ever in FS. You guys wish you had a beta this awesome.

Thank you for reading this far. Concrit and feedback of all sorts hugged until the stuffing comes out.


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